Ban.jo is now available in Italian. Last days I had the opportunity to exchange some emails with Chris Seth, EVP for Banjo about the state of his app and the world of social, local and mobile web. Here are a few questions and his answers. Enjoy.

Everyone knows that the future is social, local and mobile. What’s Your point of view about it and why we should pay attention to Ban.jo?

The future is indeed social, local and mobile. We are social animals – we talk with our friends and operate in a series of networks. We are mobile because we are continually travelling, to places near and far. And we are local because the things that are immediately around us have a direct impact on our lives. So the future is all about location as this provides perspective and relevance for everything that we do, especially when it comes to social media. Knowing where the people, places and things that are important to us are can make our lives better and more rewarding.

Why should you pay attention to Banjo? Banjo is a technology company, at the intersection of mobile search and social discovery, that has developed the most powerful and sophisticated location based technology available today.

Banjo’s technology organizes and personalizes real time geo-spatial indexing of the social graph from more than 400 million people every day. Since launch we have reached over 3 million registered users who are leveraging our unique technology to make sense of all the location data in their lives, ensuring they can always be in touch and never have to miss out on the important things in their life, whether they are around the corner or around the world.

Specifically, we are the only social discovery company addressing the THERE as well as the HERE in location based services.

Our version of the HERE in location offers a better experience for consumers becase we have connected the social graph (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Linkedin so far), thus adding relevance, accuracy and many more opportunities to connect. Banjo also manages the frequency of notifications so its users are not overwhelmed, and respects the privacy settings for all the social networks it supports.

But the THERE is really far more significant for the future of location based services because so much of what is dynamic in our lives involves some degree of travel and distance. In addition, our social needs are greater in the THERE, when we find ourselves away from the usual relationships such as our close family & friends. Activity further away from us is harder to personalize and predict but ultimately more significant for the end user.

The sheer scale of data in the THERE dwarfs the HERE, so it’s a bigger technical challenge, especially when trying to do this in real time, as everything changes all the time so pre computing relationships, events, where people are, doesn’t really work. This is a huge technical problem to solve but solving it offers a significant reward.

So addressing the THERE delivers a far more complete consumer experience that we believe will forever change the way we discover and connect with people, places and things around the world. Banjo is the only company that is doing this today.Continue reading →